chapter THIRTY-FOUR
A GAME
It was less than a half hour’s walk from the train station to the state archives, but all the big avenues leading to the palace were cut off by police blocks. The crowds on the sidewalks were nearly as thick as on the day of the Blood Wedding, and Jacob felt himself being washed along by the throng, like a piece of driftwood. Kami’en was in Vena. There was going to be a parade to celebrate the pregnancy of his human wife. The new Empress’s guards were decorating the streetlights and facades with garlands. The guards were, without exception, Goyl. Amalie left her protection to her husband’s soldiers. It was said she preferred to pick ones that had Kami’en’s carnelian skin. The garlands were strung with moonstone flowers, and the barricades along the streets were decorated with silver branches. Yet all Jacob saw was Troisclerq as he pinned a flower to Fox’s dress. What was going on with him? You’re jealous, Jacob. Don’t you have enough problems already?
He turned into the next alley – and ended up in front of another roadblock. Damn. Who was he fooling? The Bastard had long since found the heart. Stop it, Jacob! But he couldn’t remember ever having felt so tired. Not even the fear of death penetrated the fog in his head.
He pulled out the city guide he’d bought at the station. It was an unwieldy, chatty thing, as thick as a novel and filled with tiny print. But the Goyl had changed Vena so much that he hardly knew the place any more. The archive was on a street that was also on the parade route. Maybe he should try the mausoleum first. He leafed through the densely printed pages – holding Earlking’s card in one hand.
YOU’RE WASTING YOUR TIME, JACOB.
MUSEUM OF AUSTRIAN HISTORY.
HALL 33.
THE MAN WHO WAS GUISMOND’S EYES ALSO KNEW HIS HEART.
Jacob looked down the street. The pain in his chest was now constant, like a wound that wouldn’t heal. The price should be payable. He flagged down a cab and gave the driver the address of the museum.
Columns shaped like the bodies of tethered Giants. The entrance a frieze of vanquished Dragons. Dwarfs and Heinzel as chiselled ornaments beneath the windows. The building that housed the Museum of Austrian History had originally been a palace. One of the Empress’s ancestors had designed every detail himself. In his day he was called the Alchemist Prince, but it wasn’t his statue in front of the museum; it was that of his great-grandson, flanked by the equestrian statues of two victorious generals. Jacob pushed through the stream of uniformed schoolchildren flooding down the steps. He put the entrance fee in front of the ticket lady. Luckily, a goldsmith had agreed to change a few of the pathetic coins Jacob’s handkerchief still produced for brand-new guilders. The currency now bore Kami’en’s profile instead of the Empress’s.
Unlike the imperial Chambers of Miracles, the museum held no magical objects, but in its halls Jacob had learnt more about the Mirrorworld than many who were born there ever did. Weapons and armour of Austrian knights, long spears for fighting Giants, Ogre claws, gilded Dragon saddles, a copy of the original Emperor’s throne, and the head of the horse that had warned the Empress’s mother of a poisoned apple. Thousands of objects brought the history of Austry to life. Jacob remembered his first visit very well. Chanute had taken him to find information on a castle that had sunk into a lake more than a century before. Jacob had stopped in front of every display until Chanute grabbed him by the neck and shoved him along. But Jacob had snuck back every time they stopped in Vena, usually while Chanute was sleeping off his cheap wine. Jacob could find his way through the halls blind, but the Goyl hadn’t just changed the map of Vena. They’d done the same to Austry’s history.
The room where Jacob stopped had, until a few months earlier, housed the robes of state of the deposed Empress. Now the room was dominated by her daughter’s bloody wedding gown. The wax doll wearing it looked eerily like Amalie. The wax rendering of Kami’en’s stone skin was not half as convincing. Jacob approached the wax figure next to the King. The Jade Goyl stared at him through golden glass eyes. It looked so much like Will that Jacob could hardly bear to look at it. There was, of course, also a wax effigy of the Dark Fairy. She was standing a little aside. Wax corpses covered with black moths were strewn around her feet.
It’s in the past, Jacob. Like everything else here. Yet for a few breaths, he was transported back to the cathedral. Clara was again lying among the dead, Will was wearing the grey uniform soaked in Goyl blood, and his own tongue was forming the name that had planted death in his chest.
His brother’s glassy glance followed Jacob from room to room. He nearly walked past the one with the number 33.
The red walls were covered with portraits of Austry’s imperial family. They hung all the way up to the ceiling, frame on frame, countless faces with the brown patina of many centuries. The deposed Empress’s great-grandparents, her grandmother’s infamous brothers, the Emperor whom everybody called the Changeling (he’d probably been one). And of course there was also a portrait of Guismond. He wasn’t wearing the cat-fur coat from the tomb’s door, but was clad in the armour of a knight, though his helmet was shaped like the head of the crowned wolf on his crest. Next to his was a portrait of his wife with their three children. In the painting the children were still very young and stood very close to their mother. The pupils of Guismond’s wife were not those of a Witch, but that didn’t mean much. Every Witch could make herself look like a human woman. There were also portraits of Feirefis and Gahrumet as Kings, but Jacob just gave them with a quick glance. He also passed Orgeluse’s portrait, which showed her with her husband. The picture he did stop at was the one painting in room 33 that didn’t depict a member of the imperial dynasty. Jacob had noticed it years earlier, because the man looking out from the heavy golden frame bore a slight resemblance to his grandfather. Hendrick Goltzius Memling had been the Witch Slayer’s court painter, but it was not his art that had made him famous. He was also rumoured to have carried on a passionate affair with Guismond’s daughter. His was a self-portrait. Memling had painted it three years after Guismond’s death, and he’d dated it himself. Hanging from his neck was a gold-set stone. Memling was touching it with the fingers of his right hand, which was crippled but had reportedly enabled him to handle the tools of an engraver better than anybody else. The stone was as black as coal.
The golden hearts and the black hearts. Chanute’s voice had sounded almost devout when he told Jacob about them. ‘The golden ones are those of alchemists. At some point they got the silly idea to turn their hearts into gold to make themselves immortal. Many had theirs cut out of their living bodies.’ ‘And the black ones?’ Jacob had asked. What did a thirteen-year-old boy care about immortality? ‘The black ones are the hearts of Warlocks,’ Chanute had replied. ‘They look just like black jewels. Whoever carries one around his neck supposedly gets anything he desires. But if you wear it too close to your heart, it will rob you not only of all joy but also of your conscience.’
Jacob stepped closer to the painting.
Memling was looking down at him through cold eyes. There were stories that he had poisoned not only his wife but also Orgeluse out of jealousy. It might have been Orgeluse’s downfall that she had given the man she loved her father’s heart.